We need to block ANY people who are destined to become a burden on, or a danger to, the taxpaying citizens and LEGAL immigrants…period. We want to welcome people who have a sincere interest in becoming AMERICANS and embracing the American culture and language. We do NOT want to be forced to welcome people who are coming here to suck on the government teat, to demand that we adopt THEIR culture and language, or to lie doggo until they feel the time is right to rise up and “kill the infidels.”

No Dave, we didn’t control for this with the Vietnamese, or the Cubans, and it still turned out fine.

We don’t need to do this. No government Bureaucrat knows who is “useless” or not, and immigrants are a self-selected group, who represent the portion of that countries population most likely to take risks.

It works out on its own, so quit messing with it, and quit trying to put bureaucrats in charge of fit. They don’t make it better.

According to another study by sociologists at the Universidad Central in Venezuela, an estimated 1.5 million Venezuelans, most of them professionals, had left the country as of 2015, with 260,000 going to the United States

So basically, the opposite of our Mexican immigrants. Sort of like Indians.

No Dave, we didn’t control for this with the Vietnamese, or the Cubans, and it still turned out fine.

We don’t need to do this. No government Bureaucrat knows who is “useless” or not, and immigrants are a self-selected group, who represent the portion of that countries population most likely to take risks.

It works out on its own, so quit messing with it, and quit trying to put bureaucrats in charge of fit. They don’t make it better.

Really? You must have forgotten about the Vietnamese gangs that flourished in SE Texas and Southern California, or the Cubans emptying their prisons of violent criminals and putting them on the Mariel Boat Lift. How do you think those things “worked out” for the people they preyed on? Not all government workers are brain-dead automatons, AS.

But hey, I’ll take this on and point out another thing you ignored when I brought it up before.

Phds driving taxis cabs. Why does this happen? As you see it alot in Canada right now, even among immigrants who aren’t fleeing something.

And the truth is, it’s the result of there not being enough labor to create opportunities for the more high skilled individuals to use their skills. You, as a worker, can only specialize in an environment where there is demand for that specialization. For that demand to exist takes scale, scale provided either by automation, or by low-skilled labor, handling more of the routine work.

According to another study by sociologists at the Universidad Central in Venezuela, an estimated 1.5 million Venezuelans, most of them professionals, had left the country as of 2015, with 260,000 going to the United States

So basically, the opposite of our Mexican immigrants.

And this is as I said, the crux of the issue.

You don’t see what the use case is of low-skilled immigrants to the economy, because you’re unwilling acknowledge that import of labor like this, is universal. Every developed country does it. Every developed country needs to do it.

Nothing going on today changes that, this we know, because it still goes on everywhere. Not just here.

CWolf, If what you want is order, if what you want is some ability to scrutinize who comes in, you have to work with these forces. Allow immigration some natural clearing point, through the legal system.

Our geography, and our own social dynamics, make this what it is. They regulate how much control a Government can exert over the issue. For some nations, like Japan, they can exert quite a bit of control. But for us? Or for China? Or for any other large nation with established minority communities, and a long contiguous border with the place they get that immigration from? Along with a declining native population who can’t fill their own labor needs?

The efficacy here is nearly as weak as it is for enforcing copyright of music downloads. There’s too many ways for someone to get through, too many reasons why people here would want to hire them, and too many people sympathetic to the migrants willing to give them space.

The implicit choice this creates, is either Government makes immigration policy compatible with the demand, or it creates a black market in labor, over which it has no control, and the negative aspects of the immigration maximize.

No Dave, we didn’t control for this with the Vietnamese, or the Cubans, and it still turned out fine.

We don’t need to do this. No government Bureaucrat knows who is “useless” or not, and immigrants are a self-selected group, who represent the portion of that countries population most likely to take risks.

It works out on its own, so quit messing with it, and quit trying to put bureaucrats in charge of fit. They don’t make it better.

Really? You must have forgotten about the Vietnamese gangs that flourished in SE Texas and Southern California, or the Cubans emptying their prisons of violent criminals and putting them on the Mariel Boat Lift.

Straw man. You forget I said this:

Alaska_Slim:

They applied to come in, and we gave them a streamlined process to do so, without caring about anything other than if they were criminals or spies.

We were trying to control for criminals, even then, among these groups. But the system isn’t perfect at it, neither then, nor now. Nor even earlier among the Italians, as italy also emptied their slums and prisons unto us.

But I see Dave, that you can’t dissuade the point. Even with these criminals, immigration was still worth it.

Gaming on that most of these people, at the individual level, would turn out to be worthwhile, was a bet we won. Conservatives especially.

I don’t purport to solve every social problem; but I do purport that the evidence shows, Freedom. Is. Worth it.
Affirming the individual, affirming each person the chance to make something of themselves here, is worth it.

Sorry, AS, but no sale. Is it “WORTH IT” to you to admit uncontrolled millions–a significant proportion of whom WILL eventually kill or maim an American citizen. It isn’t “worth it” to most of the rest of us. We did NOT “control for criminals” with EITHER the Vietnamese or the Cubans. We didn’t even realize what the Cuban government was doing to us until after we’d already allowed them into Florida. Even then, we didn’t incarcerate them for any significant period of time…thank you very much Teddy Kennedy.

Sorry, AS, but no sale. Is it “WORTH IT” to you to admit uncontrolled millions–a significant proportion of whom WILL eventually kill or maim an American citizen.

People owning guns maims or kills Americans. Yet freedom to own them is still worth it.

Same applies to immigrants. Just because Freedom creates social costs, doesn’t make it less of a right.

It isn’t “worth it” to most of the rest of us. We did NOT “control for criminals”

We tried to, that’s the point.

But to say it wasn’t worth having those people here would be wrong on your part. They deserved to come here, and we are made better by them being so.

Why? Because immigrants provide a voice the Left cannot quiet, no matter how hard they try. Just like this man here; voicing the truth of Socialism. That’s a voice we need Dave, you underestimate its value too much.

Oh, BS. NO ONE “deserves” to come here. Further, “people owning guns” does NOT “maim and kill people”. People with a heart to kill people “maim and kill people,” and they’ll do it by any means available. By driving a truck, making a home-made bomb, or poisoning the water supply.

Natural law. The Government has no case for stopping me from bringing over my cousin from Italy, simply because it would “prefer” I work with an American. It doesn’t have that right. (Oh and he’s Pro-life, sorry.)

Not anything like the right of the Congress to regulate and tax international trade and migration that are explicitly enumerated.

Nope, it’s not enumerated. They only have an explicit power to regulate naturalization. Which is a different issue. Before the late 19th century, only the States could regulate migration itself.

As much as I dislike simplistic labels, I have finally found the correct one to apply to your views;

Nope, it’s not enumerated. They only have an explicit power to regulate naturalization. Which is a different issue. Before the late 19th century, only the States could regulate migration itself.

Wrong, I was referring to immigration not naturalization.

Article 1. Section 9. delegates this power to the states until 1808:

“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

While the primary purpose of this clause was to avoid Congressional interference with the slave trade, it clearly delegates sole control over all migration to the Congress after 1808.

Nope, it’s not enumerated. They only have an explicit power to regulate naturalization. Which is a different issue. Before the late 19th century, only the States could regulate migration itself.

Wrong, I was referring to immigration not naturalization.

But this still isn’t right:

"It will, I presume, be admitted that slaves were the persons intended. The word slaves was avoided, probably on account of the existing toleration of slavery and of its discordance with the principles of the Revolution, and from a consciousness of its being repugnant to the following positions in the Declaration of Independence, viz.: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”

– John Jay – the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and coauthor of the Federalist Papers

“[a]ttempts [that] have been made to pervert this clause into an objection against the Constitution, by representing it…as calculated to prevent voluntary and beneficial emigrations from Europe to America.”

– James Madison, Federalist 42

And even when the first Supreme court cases establishing Federal Power on immigration were set down during the Chinese Exclusion Cases, this clause wasn’t mentioned anywhere in those rulings.

That’s quite curious, if this clause granted any such authority; instead in the 1889 ruling the Justices were appealing to more abstract reasoning. They even outright stated that restriction of migration was an inherent power, and not enumerated.

You CAN’T be serious, AS. People owning guns DO NOT “maim and kill”. People do, but “owning guns” doesn’t compel them to do so. Maiming and killing others is the SOLE responsibility of the PEOPLE…not the fact that they own guns.

Owning them in the amount we do inflates the number of Gun murders, and murders in general.

Nothing we can really do about that; the supply of guns is beyond the hands of the Government, not just legally (or morally) but on a practical level.

People do, but “owning guns” doesn’t compel them to do so.

It makes it easier. Gun laws do nothing to stop organized crime, or people dead set on killing others for premeditated reasons, but they do (or had) an effect on “crimes of passion”; people looking to kill because they’re feeling angry in the moment.

Guns also save lives, but point of fact, so do immigrants. There are immigrants who are first responders and doctors.

THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT IMMIGRANTS, IT IS ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.

You need to look back: the point was about the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and the Eastern Bloc immigrant. All of whom would be illegal immigrants, if they had been scrutinized with our normal laws.

Instead, they came here on a parallel immigration system; one that allowed far easier access.
The result in all three is people who genuinely add to the country, and are largely conservative voting blocs.

Ergo; immigrants who don’t face obtuse obstructions coming here, are not fated to be welfare rats, and are not fated to be Democrats.

Our laws that turn away 70% of legal immigrants, are the enemy here. They do nothing of use, and we should make the entirety of our system more like what those three groups went through. Because it works, and the current system doesn’t.

We already admit more immigrants here legally than any other industrialized country. How many do you think are appropriate, AS? A million a year (as it is now)? How about 10 million, 50 million or 100 million per year?